Echo of Tertullian's Anti-Marcionite Reading in Galatians 4

[stephan happy huller]

The most interesting of all the peculiar readings in the new text is perhaps the expansion of the anti-Judaic verses in Gal. iv. 21—27. The text and commentary of these verses is as follows (we print them without distinction of type on account of the difficulty of distinguishing, in a text which has gone through. some process of glossing, the commentary from the text).

Hae vero fuerunt symbola duorum testamentorum. Una populi Judaeorum secundum legem in servitute generans ad similitudinem eiusdem Agar. Agar enim ipsa est mons Sina in Arabia; est autem illa similitudo huius Jerusalem, quia in subjectione est, et una cum filiis suis servit Romanis. Superior autem Jerusalem libera est, sicut Sara ; et eminet supra omnes potestates ac principatus. Ipsa est Mater nostra, Ecclesia Sancta, quam confessi sumus.

When we compare this passage with the current Greek text, or with the critical apparatus of the New Testament, there is not at first sight anything that suggests a very different text to the common text of the epistle but when we turn to Tertullian's fourth book against Marcion, or to Zahn's reconstructed text of the epistle as used by Marcion, we find, to our surprise, that a large part of the apparent commentary is part of the text of Marcion

http://books.google.com/books?id=4fqwAA ... 22&f=false

And a subsequent analysis of Harris's discovery:

http://books.google.com/books?id=DcMUAA ... 22&f=false

I am still not convinced that the variant is Tertullian's text rather than Marcion's variant. So too with the Galatians first canon.

[DCHindley]

Ever had a "conversation" with an elderly, somewhat senile personage which consists of the other person blurting out of nowhere the logical response to some question posed by you a week earlier? Generally, we sit there scratching our head for a few minutes trying to remember the original context, and if lucky you seamlessly responded as if a week had not transpired.

Unfortunately, I am still scratching my head. You seem to be citing J Rendell Harris, but it seems as though you left out the narrative set-up that would have allowed the rest of us to figure out what you are talking about?

DCH

[stephan happy huller]

You are sick so I will be nice. I am citing J Rendell Harris's observation that the reading of Galatians 4:21 - 27 was known to the Armenian tradition. Get better soon.